Jim Sillars: Let's be honest and tackle murderous idiocy of militant Islam

Published on Saturday 11 April 2009 20:13

LIKE Muslims, I believe it was criminal to invade Iraq. I agree with Osama bin Laden that for the West, its blood counts more than Muslim blood: we know exactly the number of UK and US deaths in Iraq, but not Arab ones.

With nearly 30 years of activity in the Arab world, I'm pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli, and have reason to respect Islam's strengths. However, if the struggle against terrorism (not the foolish idea of a war), is to succeed, there needs to be some straight, friendly talking to the Muslim community.

There is a great Islamic revival under way. Like all other religious revivals, it contains a fundamentalist fringe, fanatics certain they and they alone have the one hot line to the Almighty. I've never quite understood the fanatical fringe being oblivious to their blasphemy in claiming to act in God's name. If He is offended I would have thought it is a matter for Him, and Him alone. Perhaps someone should point this out.

Given this phenomenon of revival, British home-made policy has managed to create a climate that attracts and allows terrorists to operate and target the innocents. There are four policies that come to mind: the pernicious doctrine of multiculturalism, the Human Rights Act, political correctness and the cowardice all three produce in us.

England is a fractured society, the most evident feature being the ghetto, where black, white, brown are holed up separate and far from equal. The England that used to be, where social cohesion was formed round a common view of itself, its history and values, is no more. Without social cohesion, a common commitment to society and where everyone values their fellow citizens, a country cannot win or command loyalty.

Multiculturalism has proved a disaster for social cohesion in England. It is not too late in Scotland to learn that lesson. Thanks to leaders of the Asian community such as Bashir Mann, who retained his Muslim integrity and dignity yet gelled with the rest of Scotland, young Scottish Muslims are more open to wiser counsel than the alienated young of Muslim England. But that could change, unless we roll back from nonsense. Remember the Scottish Executive slogan "One Country Many Cultures"? It promoted the idea that there is no difference between immigrant and indigenous cultures and values. One need only look at the position of women to know that is manifestly untrue when comparing Asian with British/Scottish cultures.

There is nothing inherently anti-cohesion in immigrant communities maintaining character and language, provided they have bought into the indigenous over-arching culture. There are Italian, Caribbean, Spanish, Polish and Jewish immigrant communities in all parts of Britain who have maintained their character, yet are indistinguishable from the indigenous in political outlook and social values. It has to be said, however, that, especially in England and less noticeably in Scotland, significant numbers of Asian immigrants do not buy into British culture and values. They are the product of multiculturalism, which in effect tells them they need not do so, and, logically, can reject them.

This is a dangerous situation, especially with a large number of medieval-minded preachers pumping into young minds, in England and in Pakistan, their version of how a Muslim should think. Those preachers, who as a deliberately divisive tactic differentiate between Muslims and Kaffurs (that's the rest of us), are protected by a Human Rights Act from deportation, thus continuing to fill the wells of distrust and hatred against the country and people that host them. It is not so much bizarre, but mad.

The abysmal retreat in the face of militant Islam from indigenous values by the indigenous people has been remarkable. The instrument has been political correctness, an invention of the liberal political class. Free speech, the foundation of a truly liberal society, is seriously curtailed. People in public life, in factories and offices, will turn verbal somersaults, and newspapers will avoid, if at all possible, any serious criticism of Islam in a way that they would not hesitate to apply to Christianity or atheists.

Yet, if we are to retain the values of a society with its roots in the Enlightenment, there can be no no-go areas in intellectual life and disputation. If Muslims are really to become part of a cohesive society, then they will have to accept criticism of Islam as a religious faith, and of the Prophet Muhammad as a man. He was not a divinity and thus his sayings, the Hadith, written some 250 years following his death and which form part of Islamic belief, must be capable of challenge. Much of Sharia law is also man-made, not written in God's Koran. We, the Kaffurs, must tell our Muslim fellow citizens that, like us, they must grin and bear criticism, however pointed and hurtful. That comes with being here, a society that has built up the rights of women and of free speech through noble struggles.

Until we cease to shelter in cowardice, afraid to say these things, afraid to say what should be said – when in Rome do as the Romans do – we shall not be free from preachers of terror within the country, the recruitment that is bound to follow, and the acts that are inevitable. Of course I am aware of how Muslims react to our foolish policy in Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan. But that does not allow me, or any Muslim, off the hook regarding the morality of killing and maiming our fellow citizens because of actions by our Government.

It's time for outspoken honesty between the indigenous and the Muslim community.